Xu Xianjia
ABSTRACT
This study employed the think-aloud protocol as a qualitative research method to capture university students’ real-time cognitive processes while reading English texts. The purpose was to investigate the strategies and behaviors associated with ambiguity tolerance in English reading. Twenty university students participated in the study, divided into high, moderate, and low proficiency groups based on their TEM-4 scores. During the reading tasks, participants were asked to verbalize their thought processes, which were then analyzed qualitatively to examine how they comprehended and managed ambiguous information. Findings revealed distinct patterns across proficiency groups. The high proficiency group (H Group) demonstrated the most frequent and effective tolerance of ambiguity, employing adaptive strategies such as contextual guessing, effortless interpretation shifting, and strategic monitoring. The moderate proficiency group (M Group) showed intermediate performance, while the low proficiency group (L Group) encountered significant challenges, including lexical ambiguity, syntactic complexity, and contextual uncertainty, often leading to effortful thinking, repeated checking, and focus shifts that hindered comprehension. Based on these results, the study constructed a heat path maps model to visually illustrate how the three proficiency groups engaged with ambiguity across different stages of the reading process (Intake, Ambiguity Tolerance Proper, and Accommodation). The model highlights that ambiguity tolerance is both a linguistic and cognitive process, shaped by learners’ proficiency levels and adaptive capabilities. Pedagogically, the study underscores the need to design reading tasks that are sensitive to learners’ proficiency levels in order to foster cognitive engagement. Furthermore, it suggests that educators should cultivate cognitive flexibility and emotional resilience through strategies such as contextual guessing, reflective reading, and metacognitive awareness. Strengthening these skills can enhance learners’ ability to manage ambiguity, thereby improving reading comprehension and overall language learning outcomes.
Keywords: ambiguity tolerance, behavior, English reading, strategies or, think-aloud protocol
https://doi.org/10.57180/ravh5230